There has been a system for, in a store, a warehouse, an office, or the like, sticking a radio tag to an article such as a commodity or equipment, reading information of a storing unit of the radio tag in a non-contact manner using a radio tag communication apparatus, and detecting the presence of the article. The system can acquire information of a plurality of radio tags in a short time. Therefore, the system attracts attention in terms of, for example, efficiency of various kinds of work. As a communication range of the radio tag communication apparatus is wider, it is possible to acquire information of a larger number of radio tags.
As an example of use of the system, the radio tag is stuck to an article, an ID number (identification information) for specifying the radio tag and state information such as manufacturing year, month, and the like of the article are stored in the storing unit of the radio tag, and the state information of the radio tag is read by the radio tag communication apparatus to detect whether the article is within an expiration date for use (or within a freshness date).
JP-A-2011-237941 discloses a radio tag communication apparatus that detects a radio tag having specific ID information out of a plurality of radio tags and performs recognition work for an article.
The radio tag communication apparatus in the past stores identification information and state information of radio tags in a server or the like, extracts the identification information of the radio tags stuck to articles having an expired expiration date for use, and creates list information (an ID list). When the list information is acquired beforehand, search work can be performed by setting a search ID in the radio tag communication apparatus. However, the list information (the ID list) sometimes cannot be acquired beforehand.
For example, articles including radio tags are shipped and further passed to a final delivery destination through an intermediate delivery destination. In some case, individual item management is not performed in the intermediate delivery destination using identification information of the radio tags. Therefore, when work for searching for and removing articles having an expired expiration date for use is performed in the intermediate deliver destination, first, an operator needs to move around the intermediate delivery destination while reading radio tags present in the intermediate delivery destination using the radio tag communication apparatus and read identification information and state information of all the radio tags present in the intermediate delivery destination, and, then, extract, from the read information, radio tags of articles having the expired expiration date of use and generate list information (an ID list). Further, the operator sets an ID for search in the radio tag communication apparatus and searches for and removes the articles having the expired expiration date for use and the radio tags of the articles. That is, after moving around the intermediate deliver destination in order to generate the list information (the ID list), the operator has to move around the intermediate delivery destination again in order to search for and remove the articles having the expired expiration date for use.